


Caller ID

by MoonliteMooney



Category: Company - Sondheim/Furth
Genre: AU, F/F, Genderbend, Unfinished, company west end
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-04
Updated: 2020-09-04
Packaged: 2021-03-07 03:07:49
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,293
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26289967
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MoonliteMooney/pseuds/MoonliteMooney
Summary: Not much happens here, but Bobbie is blind and Joanne is childish. What else is new?
Relationships: Joanne/Larry (Company), Joanne/Robert (Company)
Comments: 13
Kudos: 17





	Caller ID

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this last year and never did anything with it. What I hate is there are some fixings for a really good fic, here, and yet this is it. 1.296 words.

Joanne calls often, leaves voicemails, calls when she should be doing something but wants a distraction, called once in the middle of a date that was going fairly well. Bobbie realized after she hung up and looked at her date that it was not actually going very well - Bobbie just wanted it to.

* * *

Bobbie snatches her phone off the counter, and the next second Joanne is in her ear and Bobbie’s tightly focused expression has morphed to a lazy smile.

“Larry thinks this is a business call.”

“Joanne, hello. How are you?”

Joanne sighs in lieu of a response, and Bobbie can practically see her pained frown; clearly whatever the elite is trying to get away from is a fate worse than death. Bobbie pads back to the stove, to the late supper and stir-fry pot she abandoned for the specific ringtone she’s attached to Joanne’s cell number; she has dreams sometimes of running endlessly with her phone up ahead, ringing plaintively, and getting closer is merely an illusion. Who knows what that means, but Bobbie is always anxious until she has her phone in hand and answers.

She lowers the heat, chews her lip, and presses her phone into her ear with her shoulder.

“I’m going to leave him. This - “ Joanne says, her voice fading like she’s turned her head to glance at something, a distant crackle of sound, before coming back with an icy bite, “Is the last straw.”

Despite the danger in Joanne’s tone, and her own implacable worry, Bobbie snorts. “Sure. Last straw.”

“Something funny?”

A broccoli falls off her spatula as she lifts it to her mouth. She pauses to blow, and to change the subject before more claws come out. It’s not her place anyway, even if Joanne has called her four times this month just to vow the same thing again and again. And, again, not her place, but Joanne never holds herself to her promise.

“Where are you?” Bobbie hears a door open, and suddenly there’s traffic. She almost wishes the delicious sizzling in front of her would hush up so she could listen better and maybe deduce on her own, as Joanne might not even deign to answer her question.

Solicitously, Bobbie adds, “Want me to pick you up?” And takes a generous taste of her cooking. It’s heavenly, and she sighs happily as she chews. One of her ex’s taught her how to make a proper stir fry; she thinks maybe she should reconnect with Geoff just to thank him.

She decides against it as Joanne replies in a low voice that immediately gets her attention; stir fry forgotten even as she takes another sample;

“I’m a newly divorced woman, not a preschooler who wet themselves. Are you eating?”

Bobbie bobs her head and sets down her spatula, licked clean, then remembers Joanne can’t see her. “Yep, veggie stir fry.”

“Hmm.”

Bobbie listens for a second, then asks, “Are you smoking?” She sounds cocky even to herself.

“Yes.” Joanne says curtly. Smoking is her only reprieve. “Larry didn’t see me go out. He thinks I got a call from the office,”

“Oh. Didn’t he ask you last week to quit?” Which also happened to be the reason for Joanne’s last phone call, and her last threat of a marital dismissal.

“Fuck I forgot about that. God! This couldn’t get any worse. If it’s not apparent, I’m having a horrible time without you here to save me from my husband,”

Right. Joanne is avoiding Larry, because, presumably, he’s done something egregious enough to warrant a divorce and a phone call. Maybe a night to the opera when he knows how much she despises sopranos? And Tenors? And any alto that isn’t her, for that matter.

Or maybe she’s at dinner, in some fancy and outrageously expensive restaurant, and Larry has begged to order for her, and now Joanne is being forced to eat some kind of ‘gourmet experience’.

Or they could be at home, on the Upper West Side, and Larry asked something simple like how was your day, and that was so obviously the last straw even if Larry didn’t know. And now Joanne is hiding outside behind the guise of a work call. Bobbie could feel indignant that she would drag her into the dirt too, without so much as a warning except her ringtone, but she finds, hearing Joanne talking in conspiracy with her, she doesn’t mind.

Bobbie fixes her phone in the crook of her neck, and says seriously, “Should I be saying more corporate things? Like wages, expenditures, or fiscal fisting, or -”

She hears Joanne’s unwilling peal of laughter and laughs herself.

“Such wit.” Joanne purrs. “I’d rather talk about taking off all my designer clothing and ditching the materialistic world forever. What did you say you were eating?”

“Stir fry. Geoff taught me how to make it last year. Remember Geoff?”

Joanne makes a noncommittal noise. Then, to Bobbie’s utmost surprise, and Joanne’s too, Jo pleas thickly, “It really is awful here without you. Would you consider meeting us?”

She’s stunned, but tries very hard not to be. Because then Joanne might take it back.

Against her best efforts, Bobbie still feels like her brain is buffering, but she expertly manages a bare, “Oh,”

And it’s enough for Joanne.

“After you’re done eating, I mean.” Joanne amends with an air of finality. And anticipation. “We have dinner to get through anyway, four courses, and it’ll probably take even longer because Larry has some annoying couple chained to our table. They talk like they’ve just learned how to this morning, it’s driving me crazy.”

Bobbie’s grin stretches further, “Sounds awful,” 

“Well you’d know bad company, wouldn’t you?”

“Hey!”

“I could use a nightcap; a _strong_ one. How about ten-thirty? I’ll buy your drinks, we’ll pretend that you have taste enough for bourbon, or anything other than craft beers and fruity abominations, it’ll be - fun.”

“I can buy my own drinks,” Bobbie says, and switches off her stovetop. She checks her watch: it’s only 8:51.

“If you say so,” Joanne says, in a tone that suggests she is already planning on making sure Bobbie doesn’t get the chance to even touch her wallet.

“I have a job, you know. I have money,” Bobbie says, on the defense. And yet she’s already feeling light-headed with excitement, and a healthy dose of nervous. 

The last night she went out with Joanne, Larry was not there. And things had been… Weird. She still couldn’t quite explain it, and has since shakily chalked it up to something that had nothing to do with her.

Joanne had looked guilty. That’s what it was. Yes, Bobbie remembers now, the guilty smiles, the repentant evasive eye contact. But she had no idea what Joanne felt guilty about. She had just felt bad, for Jo, for herself, for the rat Joanne accidentally stepped on when she wasn’t paying close enough attention because she had been so intent on ignoring something else.

She hopes tonight will be different. And with that thought, she realizes she’s already decided to go.

“Of course I know that, but I like spending money on -“

“Okay.”

“- you. Oh. Great. Yes, great. See you then, doll.” Joanne hangs up.

With a shrug and a happy smile, Bobbie hangs up and hops over to rummage in her cabinet for a dish. So Joanne wants to have drinks again, after almost two months of phone calls, exclusively. Cool.

It’s when she’s piling a scrumptious dinner onto her plate and setting her dish on the table that Bobbie suddenly realizes she has no idea where in the vast city Joanne is. Because Joanne hadn’t answered her; like she knew she wouldn’t.

That’s just not going to do. 

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading :) u r a doll


End file.
